Data is worth its weight in gold — especially in online marketing! It is not without reason that we have made it our mission to advance the digital performance of our customers by offering them data-driven, high-quality and legally compliant marketing solutions.
We see every day how important meaningful data is for the success of companies. Data-driven is the key component here and, with the advent of big data, AI, and machine learning, it is becoming increasingly evident what insights we can draw from the data we collect.
However, the wealth of information provided by analytics tools such as Google Analytics 4 (GA4) can sometimes be overwhelming. Many companies tend to track all the data they can, with only a fraction actually being displayed in reports, of which only a fraction is analysed on a regular basis.
That’s why we at Advance Metrics asked ourselves: Which GA4 reports provide brands with the most valuable insights? To answer this question, we asked our team of experienced data analysts to share their expertise.
Below, we present the best GA4 reports from the perspective of our analysts. And since our work here is also data-based, we provide you with the following information for all three reports:
- Key insights: What exciting insights into marketing performance does the report provide?
- Recommendations for action: What recommendations for action can you derive from these findings?
- Implementation effort: How much effort is required to set up the report on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 means minimal effort and 5 means greater effort due to customer-specific adjustments.
All three reports help you to optimize your marketing strategy, better understand your target group and make the success of your marketing measures measurable!
1. Report on Traffic Acquisition
Key Insights:
The key insights we look for in the Traffic Acquisition Report are the following: Channel Grouping, Source/Medium, Campaign.
Channel Grouping tells you at a glance which channel is the gateway to your website for the majority of your visitors. It also helps you to understand which of these channels is most interesting for your marketing goals. Source/Medium gives you the opportunity to view channels in more detail. This allows you to understand, for example, which referral source achieves the highest conversion count.
However, we see the greatest added value in the traffic acquisition report for campaigns. Here you can view the performance of your campaigns. The prerequisite for which is a proper implementation of UTM parameters and consistent campaign naming, as campaigns are often not properly assigned due to inconsistent parameterization. We therefore recommend developing a UTM concept together with tools such as the Google Campaign URL Builder. To make it even easier for your team, we have developed our own UTM builder tool, which you can find here.
Recommendation for action:
- Allocate media budget in channels that are performing well and invest time to optimize campaigns to further increase performance.
- Adjust campaign strategies for channels with potential for improvement.
- Review and adjust UTM parameters.
- Recognize trends and develop new strategies for campaigns.
Implementation effort:
We picked a 2 out of 5 for the implementation effort, as most of it already works out-of-the-box.
2. Events Report
Key Insights:
Whether it’s the number of scroll events per user or the completion and submission of the contact form — in the event report, you can see all interactions that are carried out on your website.
The switch from a session-based tracking concept in Universal Analytics to event-based tracking in GA4 is indicative that Google also believes there is added value here. Events give us the opportunity to track the behavior of our website visitors down to the smallest detail. We can not only recognize the event properties, but also the context surrounding the event. For example, which of our campaigns generates the most contact form events.
The key insights here are designed to measure the goals you have defined for your website. However, events can also be used for segmenting visitors or attribution modelling of conversions. To find the right attribution model for your marketing strategy, take a look at our blog post on campaign performance.
Recommendation for action:
- Analyzing user behaviour to increase the user-friendliness of the website.
- Focusing on channels and campaigns that lead to important events.
- Creating audience segments based on the collected events.
- Checking and adjusting faulty elements on the website.
Implementation effort:
Many things already work with the Enhanced Measurement function of the GTAG without much implementation effort. However, it is often necessary to integrate the additional, relevant events manually, as each website has individual goals. We therefore rate the implementation effort on our scale between 3 and 5 depending on the complexity of your website.
3. Conversions Report
Key Insights:
Conversions describe the key goals of a website. The implementation is straightforward, because a conversion is simply an event that is marked as a conversion in GA4. All conversions are events, but not all events need to be conversions.
Apart from the insights that an event itself offers you, conversions unlock further functions in GA4. The greatest benefit of conversions is the analysis of the user touchpoints that lead to a conversion.
GA4 assigns the conversions to your marketing channels so that you can make data-driven decisions. In the exploration tool, you can also create a conversion funnel visualization to identify the different user touchpoints before a conversion. This allows you to quickly see whether the customer journey on your website needs to be improved.
Recommendation for action:
- Analyze secondary dimensions, such as demographics, geographics or device, to better understand your target audience and improve the conversion funnel.
- You can consider increasing the media budget in the channels that lead to the most conversions.
- Use the exploration tool to identify points of friction in the customer journey that are stopping users from completing the desired action in order to improve your website experience.
Implementation effort:
Since activating conversions is a simple switch in the GA4 interface, we have rated the implementation effort with a 1.
Summary
Google Analytics 4 provides you with a multitude of helpful reports that give you valuable insights into your website performance and user behavior. We have presented the three most important reports in GA4 from the perspective of our analytics experts:
- Traffic acquisition: This report provides you with a good overview of the channels that direct visitors to your website. It is also ideal for measuring campaign performance or finding errors in UTM parameters. Implementation is relatively simple.
- Events report: The events report allows you to analyze user behavior on your website in detail. Which events do visitors perform? How do they interact with the website content? The difficulty of implementation depends on the level of complexity of your events and can range from very simple to highly complex.
- Conversion report: Focus on your marketing goals with this report! You can see which marketing channels lead to conversions and also have the option of visualizing the conversion funnel. Fortunately, implementation is very simple, provided you have already set up the events.
Using reports in GA4 is an important step in optimizing your website performance and marketing strategies. If the reports in GA4 are too inflexible or simply too boring for you, there is also the option to visualize your data to your liking with Google Looker Studio. With a little technical understanding and the right customization to your specific needs, you can use these reports effectively to collect valuable data and make data-driven decisions.
If you have any questions about implementing GA4 or using the reports presented, please do not hesitate to contact us. We will be happy to help you realize the full potential of your website analytics!
